Giving It Up

My hobby right now is watching YouTubes of different therapeutic methods for reducing anxiety (etc) and trying out the many practical methods on offer, my favourite being to hum a low "ohmmmmm" while sitting in a comfortable position, hands open and facing up.

The low "ohmmmmm" stimulates the vagus nerve (you're also doing a breathing exercise) and the open hands imply releasing yourself to the universe.

I've also learned we shouldn't label anxiety, guilt (etc) bad, but rather allow ourselves to feel these emotions while recognizing they refer to events in the past, and since we can't change the past, our job is to let it go, stop picking that scab and let the wound heal already, so those emotions will leave us, too.

Dr. Wayne Dwyer describes guilt as a useless emotion, by the way. He also advises we dump our resentments if we really want to lighten our load, stop blaming others, take responsibility for our own behaviour and leave everybody else's up to them.

Crazy the number of ways we need to be told, "You can't change someone else's behaviour but you can change your own."

By the way, no one needs to be told of an aggravating behaviour of their partner, either, as if we must have acquired magical powers over them through sex and can change them to better suit you.

I also just read Lori Gottlieb's book, "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone".

It's so good I read all 412 pages in two sittings.

It's a names and details changed re-telling of her sessions with four patients, as well as her own sessions with another therapist. She's a good writer so it reads like a novel. The insights, thanks to her, but also her patients and therapist, were useful to me, the most useful being an image her therapist presents to her of a person shaking the bars of what appears to be a prison cell, except there aren't any walls.

Been there, done that. But freedom means taking responsibility, too, and sometimes, maybe even a lot of the time, it can be easier to believe we're trapped. Also, as noted, and this was a big one for me, change isn't just hard, it's loss.

I'd never thought of change that way but it explains a lot, doesn't it? I get vicarious thrills when other people make big changes in how they're living but it's because I'm not experiencing any loss when they do. I even get vicarious thrills from imagining changes to my own life but that's pretty safe from loss, too.

In the case of divorce, change doesn't just mean tangible loss, which is hard enough, but also the loss of how we thought our lives and the lives of our children, if we have them, would be. And because those thoughts were only ever imaginings, we never get to experience how unrealistic they were, and so are left believing we robbed ourselves, our children, our families, of the good life, the proper life, the life without regrets and recriminations, a life where everybody and everything turned out perfect.

It doesn't help that the lost life of our dreams was based on happily ever after Hollywood movies, either.

Also, families are secret societies, each of us left to believe we're the only fucked up one, friends showing friends pictures of adorable grandchildren, not their mother's mugshot for a DUI when she was 25 and fresh out of rehab.

I only recently learned of something called Radical Acceptance, so I've been watching videos about it and practicing RAIN - Recognition, Acceptance, Investigation, Nurturing. Compassionate inquiry (Gabor Mate) and self-forgiveness are helping shut up that Nabob of Negativity who pops up in my head on the regular.

I was drawn to the concept of Radical Acceptance, though, because I have a hard time facing the reality that most of life is out of my control.

There's nothing like becoming a mother to really bring out the freak in control freak.

I'm also both a catastrophizer and a magical thinker.

And yes, it's entirely unfair that being a magical thinker doesn't cancel out being a catastrophizer.

One of my favourite finds was a short video about cognitive behaviour therapy, showing a diagram linking thoughts to feelings to behaviour.

The therapist pointed out it's really difficult to change our thoughts, so what we should do is change our behaviour. So exercise, eat well, sleep more, socialize (in my opinion this can mean just smiling at someone in the street, whatever reminds us we're not alone but part of a great big tribe of misfits), cut out alcohol, drugs (Health Canada recommends 0 glasses of anything with alcohol in it) - and this one is for me - GO OFFLINE!

Social media is a helluva drug.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful.

Sorry about the alcohol and drugs, but therapists are pretty much unanimous on that one. And if you're having trouble imagining life without them, well, maybe you should talk to someone.

Sober Sally over and out.